Breaking news: California Senate advances a major data mining tax to fund journalism jobs

Senator Steve Glazer's Senate Bill 1327 secures a two-thirds majority.

This just in: Minutes ago, the California Senate voted 27-7 to advance Senator Steve Glazer’s incredibly ambitious bill SB 1327 to tax Big Tech data-mining to fund hundreds of millions of dollars worth annually of journalist employment tax credits.

This is actually the second massive journalism jobs bill moving forward this week in the California legislature that would tap the Big Tech industry to fund local journalism jobs.

The other bill, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks’ California Journalism Preservation Act, AB 886, advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday with a 9-2 vote.

The committee vote earlier this week and the senate vote this morning send a resounding message that California is set to lead the nation on making ambitious policy to revitalizing local journalism instead of just nibbling around the edges.

Here is my previous write-up of Senator Glazer’s data-mining measure, which would impact Google, Meta and Amazon. The employment tax credit structure is similar to the ones just adopted in New York and Illinois — except far bigger. In fact, bigger than any other investment in local journalism in American history. It’s a bill the recognizes the scope of the problem.

Here is my last writeup of Assemblymember Wicks’ bill, which is a bargaining bill that would also require massive tech companies (Google and Meta) to fund journalism jobs, though it does so effectively by creating a bargaining table between the industries, rather than using a tax measure as an intermediary. I testified in support of that bill on Tuesday. It’s similar to a Canadian law which has led Google to agree to pay $100 million Canadian to Canadian news outlets annually, and like Senator Glazer’s bill, could have an extraordinary economic impact on California’s local journalism industry.

California’s journalist unions (one of which, Media Guild of the West, I am the president of) heartily support both bills and have been working with both sponsors’ offices on amendments. Either one would have a dramatic impact on the local news industry in California.

More to come.